Beware Of Treadmills

This is a repost.

I’ve been working out at a gym lately.

I would like a bit more upper body strength and I would also like to increase my running ability.

When I was younger, I logged a LOT of running miles, until the back of my knees started to shoot some incredibly sharp pains. My doctor strongly suggested that I stop running for a few months, give my body some time to heal, eventually buy a good pair of running shoes and attend a running clinic so that I could learn how to run properly. I wasn’t pleased with this advice so I took up cycling instead.

These days, I want to try running again and because I agree with the idea of muscle memory, I figured the whole feel of running would come back really quickly. I jumped onto the treadmill this afternoon and upped the speed. After all, this was my fourth time on the treadmill and I was ready for a bit more of an aerobic challenge.

Now, I haven’t watched The Price is Right for many years but that’s what was showing on the TV screen in the gym. The show host was enticing a contestant, dressed like a jellyfish (actually, the costume was quite creative – this woman had managed to make a very convincing guise out of bubble wrap!) with a huge brightly colored box on stage. She had already won a $4,000, diamond watch and seemed content with this prize but the audience was heckling her, prodding her onward to bigger and better. I wanted her to take the watch and sit down.

Jellyfish lady chose the box.

When the pretty lady on stage lifted the lid on the box, a huge jack-in-the-box puppet jumped up. My eyes were glued to the TV screen and I stopped running.

Yup…you can picture it, can’t you? Like Lucy Ricardo in the old I Love Lucy show, I went backwards at a good clip and smashed into the wall behind me.

THANKFULLY, there was no witnesses to this escapade – the gym was empty at the time. However, this gym happened to share a wall with a spa next door that had recently gone through a renovation and before I could gather myself off the floor with some semblance of dignity, a woman came flying through the door yelling, “I think there’s a wall coming down!” Talk about eating humble pie. I had to assure this woman that the THUMP she heard was my agile body smashing into the wall.

I can understand her fear. Our gym and spa are located in an historic building in downtown, small town, Ontario. It is a beautiful building with 10-12′ high arching windows across one wall of the gym and wonderfully creaky wide-plank hardwood floors throughout, none of which you could place a medicine ball on without it slowly rolling to a low spot elsewhere in the room. Let’s just say that it needs a little TLC, and “a wall coming down” is not beyond the realm of possibilities.